Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 364: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CARROTTY POLL’S RETURN 347 of negro slavery in the land of Washington. But they for- get, —no, they do not forget,— they wilfully shut their eyes to the truth that the enslaved blacks in the United States are an enviable race when compared with our English myriads of famishing sons and daughters of toil and our starving paupers. Talk of tyranny and oppression! Why, where is greater tyranny practised than in England toward the poor? O ye vile hypocrites who assemble at Exeter Hall, dare not to say a word against the fine people of the Transatlantic Union, when so much cruelty is practised in this country! There breathes not a nobler, more generous, more enlightened, more free, nor more estimable nation on the face of God’s earth than the Americans. Slavery is a black spot upon their civilization, it is true, but that spot is absolutely white when compared with the stain of hellish dye which the miseries of our own poor stamp upon the name of England. | To resume the thread of our narrative: long was the orgy continued at the Beggar’s Staff. Ribald jokes elicited peals of laughter; obscene songs were welcomed with vociferous applause. An occasional quarrel and consequent fight varied the interest of the proceedings; and at last two or three of the younger women present stripped them- selves stark naked and danced madly under the influence of brandy. - Their lascivious movements, disgusting attitudes, and abominable freaks raised the delight of the spectators to a positive delirium; and the liquor flowed so plenteously that the Big Beggarman was perfectly correct in his calcula- tion that every penny of the sum so liberally bestowed by the Amazon would find its way ere morning into his till. At length, between four and five o’clock, some of the | vagabonds and prostitutes began to stagger away to their own dens; others, who were utterly incapable of taking care of themselves, were borne off by their less inebriate friends, and gradually a clearance took place. For a short time the singing and shouting were transferred to the adjacent streets; and the neighbours, who were startled from their slumbers by the untimely din, thus received unmistakable warning that the company at the Beggar’s Staff was breaking up. Thus, while at the West End of London titled dowagers were sleeping comfortably with their fat butlers, widowed GOmMmiicdooks (C©)